Week 18: Phase 3: The steps of woe: Week of June 28th

  Raining again, the rain's been heavy in between the sunny spells so it slows things down. This morning Ben and I were up at silly o'clock again to be at the wood yard for 7.30 and bought another 4 x 2.4 railway sleepers - another £112. Then on the way back home we stopped at PGR and sorted out the Wednesday delivery. They've refunded me for one of the bags of MOT and added a bag of sharp sand and 6 bags of cement. The price for the sand and the cement seemed very reasonable, so I'll have to check that tonight in case I've got the wrong stuff. I need to order the steel mesh today as well... another 2 sheets of 2 x 1 metre at either 4mm or 5mm gauge steel.

So, the orders gone through 2 panels 1 mtr x 2 mtr @4mm - cost £81.58.

Monday and it's rained on and off all day, so this evening all we did was move the Railway sleeper from the top to the bottom in readiness for the delivery on Wednesday. Looking at  the delivery note I saw that the cement bags are paper and not plastic, so we need to keep them dry, possibly store them in the garage as they're not required till the steps are finished, so possibly not still around July 8th. 

With the rain I'm not sure we're going to get the steps completed by July the 8th which was the intention.

Tuesday - Fine Mesh Metals delivered the mesh today, that's impressive with a less than 24 hour turn around! Tomorrow is a big delivery day - Sand, cement and MOT. I need to get the sand out of the garden as soon as it's delivered and get it in the garage to keep it dry. 

Wednesday - Still raining. The lorry turned up at 7.30 from PGR - half expected it to do so as we only live about 1/2 a mile from their yard. 

I had to go to work though leaving the cement in paper bags on top of one of the bulk bags albeit wrapped up in cling film. I've asked Ben to move them into the garage during the day if the rain eased off a bit, so hopefully he'll have done that by the time I get home? 

That evening. Yep, Ben had moved the cement and cut some of the mesh up to make step gabions. The rain has eased a bit today, but it's far too wet to do anything. 

Sunday. It had rained a bit in the morning, but the last couple of days I've had a trap over the steps to keep the clay as dry as I possibly can, so around 1pm the rain seemed to have stopped and we got outside (Ben and me) and made a start to see what we could do in between showers. 

Images above shows where we were at this morning (Sunday) with regards progress. Very little had been happening this week as it kept raining and we weren't able to get out and do anything.

This morning the rain eased and around midday the sun came out and we were able to get out and crack on with some work. I wanted the steps to be pretty much done by July 8th and it was looking touch and go, but with both Joe and Ben at home today we got on with it and good progress was made...

So tonight Joe and I finished off the top step and it looks like one more gabion will do it and that's it the steps are 95% done. In the short term as we're up and down the steps with dirt, cement rocks and crap we're leaving the concrete slabs on the gabions, but, nearer the finish they'll be replaced with sandstone slabs (Light grey). The intention is the final gabion will be in place by the end of tomorrow and then we'll be moving on to Phase 4 - the patio.